Mumbai artist incarcerates himself

In a ground floor flat in Clark House on Wodehouse Road in Colaba, off a short corridor, artist Tushar Joag has vowed to remain incarcerated in a tiny space measuring 150 centimers by 91 centimeters until May 30. Behind a dense mesh of straw-like thread, his cocoon is claustrophobic in the humid heat of May.

All Joag has for company is a desk, chair and notebooks in which he's incessantly writing this sentence: “I will not lose faith in the Indian Judiciary and Democracy." 

There’s a small window through which food is passed. And there's a makeshift toilet. But don’t think of these as added luxuries.

This is Right to Dissent, a public intervention art piece -- together with an exhibition by prominent Indian artists, two film screenings and a panel discussion -- convened by Tushar Joag, in collaboration with the Mohile Parikh Centre for the Visual Arts, Clark House (a new curators' art collective) and the Committee for the Release of Binayak Sen.

You remember Dr. Sen. The public health activist who has been working in tribal areas for decades, who was wrongly confined to Raipur Central Jail in December 2010 on charges of sedition, then released in April, the charge suspended on orders of the Supreme Court.

Dr. Sen will join the Right to Dissent panel discussion at M. C. Ghia Hall in Kala Ghoda on May 30.

You are also invited to add your voice and post your own notebooks (details here) filled out with Joag's chosen sentence of dissent. These will be sent to Union Minister of Law and Justice Dr. Veerappa Moily, who within hours of Sen’s release declared the need to review the sedition law.

Tushar Joag has been admired before for work that reflects a strong social concern. Whether it's his support for activist Medha Patkar and the Narmada Bachao Andolan or the Unicell projects injecting aesthetic sense into the social and political arena, there’s often been a touch of satire in his work.

Not so here. This is performance art at its purest, a tour de force of endurance, time, solitary reflection and, as it is with Joag, for a cause.

May 24 - 30, at Clark House, Ground Floor, 8 Nathalal Parekh Marg, near Woodside Inn, Colaba. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.